Photography And Half-Thoughts By Mitchell Hegman

...because some of it is pretty and some of it is not.

Saturday, May 21, 2016

To Fade

According to an article I
found on the Patient Education website for Harvard Medical School, our memories
and abilities to remember really do decline as we age. Our procedural memories—things such as riding
a bike or knowing how to toss a ball—are not lost during the brain’s natural
aging process.

Some memories do fade.

We lose our sense of
direction.

Declarative memories
fade. We forget where we left out keys
yesterday. We confuse birthdays.

One of my dear friends has
a mother suffering the onset of severe dementia. Her brain has gone beyond simple
forgetfulness to a point of absurdity.
She sometimes complains that it has been snowing in her room. She is pleased that a stuffed toy dog that
she keeps in her room has never “made a mess” in her apartment, but she does
not appreciate that it yips from time to time.

This all seems a bit sad,
if not cruel. This is especially true
for all those friends and loved ones observing.